Australia's internet speed is a joke.

[IONUT2024]

Sory for Australian people

 

 

 

From Romania to Australian servers

[lucky74dog]

6Mb/s? They shouldn't be complaining. Try living in a town that hasn't changed(With technology) in over 10 years. Woo! 400Kb/s! The internets going fast tonight!

[skywake]

So right now I have 35 ping, 34mbps download and 27mbps upload, I am on NBN and I pay over $90 each month!!

Now, my internet is faster than 99% of Australia, where the average internet speed doesn't go over 6mbps.

 

I'm all for complaining about the change in our country's 'net policies but seriously. You have no right to complain. I'm assuming you're on either the wireless portion or are limiting yourself to 30Mbps because of WiFi? Either way, no reason to complain.

 

 

Was on the NBN fibre footprint, wasn't on their schedule. Now I'm going to have to wait just as long for FTTN. You think I'll get much more than 25Mbps on this copper? Worse yet the government website on 'broadband quality' reckons I'm on high quality copper. Their guess is that I'm getting about 12Mbps. What are the odds they'll put me on the back of the queue again if that's what they think?

 

....... and you're complaining about 34/27Mbps

[X1XNobleX1X]

So right now I have 35 ping, 34mbps download and 27mbps upload, I am on NBN and I pay over $90 each month!!

Now, my internet is faster than 99% of Australia, where the average internet speed doesn't go over 6mbps.

In Singapore, Tokyo ecc... the average stays in the hundreds!!

Thanks Tony Abbott for promising us 25mbps by 2019!

Interesting upload speed.

On Cable I get 102 Mbps and 2 Mbps upload.

I hardly upload anything anyway.

Edit: I pay $120 for Unlimited data and home phone.

[angrylemon]

im getting 16mbp/s down not even 1mbp/s up

in australia aswell

[angrylemon]

 Sexist, homophobic, selfish, racist. Wow, good job Australia. 

cant even stop asylum seekers... what a joke

[aaronweb]

Australia $90 month for 500gb

 

Wow! That's quite bad indeed. OP, your internet is quite alright in comparison to mine and quite a few people I know.

 

I get approximately 5.6 down and not even 1 up. Although I do wish the NBN was available in my area... (fyi, I am on Bigpond and from Melbourne metro)

[Hazorazor]

Australia $100 a month 500+500GB 25/5Mbps better than what I had which was $150 a month for 500GB which only ran at 4/1Mbps. That is with home phone of course but even so. Im just lucky I got fixed wireless.

[HexaGuy]

But why do we need fast internet? Mr Malcolm Turnbull (AKA our all knowing Lord) with his infinite wisdom said that the current copper network will be sufficient for the next 20 years.

 

 

Seriously though. You're lucky that you even have the NBN. We won't get it for another 6 years, and by then, the NBN speeds will be irrelevant. 

[BabaBooey]

I knew you guys down under had lousy internet speeds, but I didn't know it was this bad  :blink:

And those data caps, that is just brutal

 

But what is the reason for this? Old farts in the government?

I imagine the size of Australia might complicate things?

 

In my country the government doesn't do much to improve the infrastructure. But luckily private companies have picked up the slack, and fibre optics are laid all the time, all around the country. My parents got fibre optic connection last year, with TV service and internet speed of 40/40 (can upgrade to 400/400).

I'm on a cable connection at the moment,150/20 so I can't complain, but I'm getting a fibre optic connection later this year 250/250

 

When it comes to data caps in my country, one ISP(one of the biggest) tried to introduce them around 2004. They soon gave that up, they lost too many customers. And that was that.

 

I know nothing about Australian politics, but are there any politicians that understand the value of a fast internet infrastructure? It's good for the economy, and it really opens up a lot of opportunities.

[skywake]

I knew you guys down under had lousy internet speeds, but I didn't know it was this bad  :blink:

And those data caps, that is just brutal

 

But what is the reason for this? Old farts in the government?

I imagine the size of Australia might complicate things?

 

The data caps are mostly because we're a country with a relatively small population on the other side of the world and we're into US content. So companies run large cables under the Pacific or Indian oceans to service basically just us and New Zealand and they have to make a return. Also there's the fact that we have places like Perth with 'only' 2mill people 2000km+ and a desert away from the nearest city within Australia. So you have to run fibre between those places and again make a return on the investment. That's why the data caps exist and also why they've gone up fairly quickly over the last few years. In 2008 I was on 30GB/mo and was using ~15GB, now I'm on 250GB/mo and am using ~100GB at the same price if not a bit less.

 

Now onto the speeds and the politics of that. Right up until about 2006 we had a government owned monopoly. From 1996 we had a conservative government who's only ambition in that space was to sell it off in pieces so that their budget would look nice. So through that period of time the government could have started to push infrastucture investment. But they didn't even though they created committees with expert panels that recommended either FTTN or FTTH as far back as 2003. When they got rid of their majority share they left Telstra together as one entity with both the infrastructure, including all of the pipes/conduit etc, and the retail arms. So if a competitor wanted to build a competing network they'd have to first strike a deal with Telstra or start digging their own trenches. It was in Telstra's interests however to maintain their infrastructure dominance so they could maintain a competitive advantage on the retail side. On several occasions they said they would upgrade their infrastructure but only on the condition that they got an even greater competitive advantage. Stuffs like "we'll upgrade on the condition that nobody else can use our network". Scumbag Telstra.

 

Enter new progressive government in 2007 with a mandate to upgrade our internets with FTTN. Fairly early on they ask all of the big players to start to submit proposals. Then the GFC hit and pretty much everyone put their tails between their legs and ran except for Telstra who again submitted proposals that nobody could take seriously. So in 2009 in an act typical of our then PM the government basically said "fuck all of you, we're going to build our own network with blackjack, and hookers before dumping a filter over it and censoring all of that". NBNCo was created, effectively a startup, tasked with rolling out FTTH with potential for post-gigabit speeds to ~90% of the population, running new backhaul so that the more remote areas were better covered, erecting 4G mobile towers to cover bush properties and commissioning two new satellites. To do this though they needed to negotiate with Telstra for the fibre portion so that they could use their pipes/conduit to build over their network and effectively make Telstra just another ISP.

 

As you'd expect the negotiations with Telstra took a lot longer than the government said they would. About 9 months longer. That combined with skills shortages in WA because of a mining boom and the discovery of broken up asbestos in the pits caused them to miss their construction targets. Something which the then opposition used to weave the NBN into their "waste and mismanagement" narrative. A move that some think was maybe helped by the fact that Newscorp would potentially lose their pay-TV dominance if everyone had GPON running to their front doors. A belief that was given some amount of weight when the then opposition announced their watering down of the NBN in a Foxtel studio exclusively on Pay TV. Despite all this the roll-out was still, and remains, massively popular. The rollout started to ramp up in early 2013 but conservatives then won government in late 2013. They have "paused" the rollout, have to re-negotiate with Telstra (hey guys, we want to use your 50 year old copper now) and are generally just dicking us all around. Constantly trying to justify their watered down network by saying that nobody really needs more than 25Mbps anyways etc, etc. This despite their (stacked) reports saying that the NBN as it was would have indeed made a return.

 

At least the previous government forced their hand a bit. In 2010 the conservatives were basically saying they would scrap the whole thing and just put up more mobile towers (you can't make this shit up). By the time the 2013 election came around they were forced to do the NBN as it was except that the FTTH part was now mostly FTTN and smaller. i.e. the Conservatives are now trying to push ahead with something that's half way between the 2007 policy and the 2009 policy of the previous government. New estates are all getting FTTH, the bush is still getting its wireless and sats, the backhaul 'broadband blackspots' thing is done, Telstra is still (probably) going to lose its vertically integrated monopoly. It's still quite a bit of progress, it just ain't the 90% coverage with gigabit capable fibre with an upgrade path to 10Gbps and beyond that we wanted.

 

......... and that's what has happened over the last ten or so years /rant

[-iSynthesis]

So right now I have 35 ping, 34mbps download and 27mbps upload, I am on NBN and I pay over $90 each month!!

Now, my internet is faster than 99% of Australia, where the average internet speed doesn't go over 6mbps. 

In Singapore, Tokyo ecc... the average stays in the hundreds!! 

Thanks Tony Abbott for promising us 25mbps by 2019! 

212259-tony-abbott-091130.jpg

Well it would cost a shitfuckton to get fibre in every single small city of australia. Its a joke in germany since its a much smaller country, they could really get better internet than 6mbps or even 1mbps lol

[-iSynthesis]

I knew you guys down under had lousy internet speeds, but I didn't know it was this bad  :blink:

And those data caps, that is just brutal

 

But what is the reason for this? Old farts in the government?

I imagine the size of Australia might complicate things?

 

In my country the government doesn't do much to improve the infrastructure. But luckily private companies have picked up the slack, and fibre optics are laid all the time, all around the country. My parents got fibre optic connection last year, with TV service and internet speed of 40/40 (can upgrade to 400/400).

I'm on a cable connection at the moment,150/20 so I can't complain, but I'm getting a fibre optic connection later this year 250/250

 

When it comes to data caps in my country, one ISP(one of the biggest) tried to introduce them around 2004. They soon gave that up, they lost too many customers. And that was that.

 

I know nothing about Australian politics, but are there any politicians that understand the value of a fast internet infrastructure? It's good for the economy, and it really opens up a lot of opportunities.

Non-fibre optik cables can push 150/20? wtf

[BabaBooey]

......... and that's what has happened over the last ten or so years /rant

Thanks for taking the time to explain your current situation.

If it's any consolation, Australia is not alone in having morons in parliament. Politicians lack the ability to think ahead more than to the next election, and they have no IT knowledge what so ever.

 

Australia would benefit greatly from having a fiber optic infrastructure. Considering the low population density and the massive size of the country, a fiber optic network would connect cities, rural areas and so on, despite huge distances. Allowing a lot of people to work from home and even get jobs, because they wouldn't need to move or travel long distances for work. Not only that, it would also be great for job creation. If the politicians would understand that it would be great for the economy to invest in fiber optic infrastructure. And to promote competition in the same process, so the citizens would get fast internet speeds, for a decent price.

And that would of course cost a great deal of money, but I'm pretty confident that your government would get back the money pretty fast.

[BabaBooey]

Non-fibre optik cables can push 150/20? wtf

HFC (Hybrid fibre-coaxial) + Docsis 3.0 can deliver a lot faster speeds than that, but it can't compete with FTTX.

[skywake]

Well it would cost a shitfuckton to get fibre in every single small city of australia. Its a joke in germany since its a much smaller country, they could really get better internet than 6mbps or even 1mbps lol

 

Indeed, and that's the problem. However the actual cost to fibre up the country per-premises only starts to really skyrocket when you go above ~90% apparently. There was a nice little graph showing this that did the rounds very early in the piece. That's why there's a fairly solid bi-partisan agreement that the hardest 10% of the country is going to get fixed wireless via LTE and a couple of shiny new sats.

 

The main difference between the two policies other than tech is cost. The new government is pushing a plan that by their own estimate requires ~$40bn peak funding, covers the first 60% with FTTN/H (60:40 FTTN:FTTH) and would be done by 2020. Why 60%? Because they're just going to leave areas that are covered by HFC. The previous plan by their same document could have had a peak funding requirement of ~$60bn, covered the first 90% with FTTH and been finished by 2023.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to explain your current situation.

If it's any consolation, Australia is not alone in having morons in parliament. Politicians lack the ability to think ahead more than to the next election, and they have no IT knowledge what so ever.

 

To be fair this sort of BS does tend to come back to bite them  

 

[Fallingout]

I'm down in South Aus and we pay $120 a month for 500GB and I get 2.2mb down max and 800kb up max. Our bandwidth is shitall and we have a ping of about 50. The cable runs from my house to the exchange, from there it travels to the next town (by car, it's a mile, well, just a tad more) to the next exchange. That exchange then connects wirelessly to Adelaide. When it rains, blows with wind or any other kind of natural event, the net drops out and I spend 5 minutes reconnecting. The wireless exchange to Adelaide drops users briefly in order to maintain bandwidth/strong connection for others and essentials. 
It's a bloody joke, I am quite willing to get out there in the trench digger or with a bloody shovel and lay that line from here to Adelaide. 

[The Crazed Child]

Tony Abbott impression: um...ahhh...err..ummm...ah...yes...but...ahhh...no

[stefannxd]

In holland we pay 50 euro's for this kind of speed:

[BabaBooey]

I'm down in South Aus and we pay $120 a month for 500GB and I get 2.2mb down max and 800kb up max. Our bandwidth is shitall and we have a ping of about 50. The cable runs from my house to the exchange, from there it travels to the next town (by car, it's a mile, well, just a tad more) to the next exchange. That exchange then connects wirelessly to Adelaide. When it rains, blows with wind or any other kind of natural event, the net drops out and I spend 5 minutes reconnecting. The wireless exchange to Adelaide drops users briefly in order to maintain bandwidth/strong connection for others and essentials. 

It's a bloody joke, I am quite willing to get out there in the trench digger or with a bloody shovel and lay that line from here to Adelaide. 

120 AUD for that connection 

Holy balls! You are being robbed in broad daylight. Your connection is the equivalent of 2 cups and a string. It's unbelievable!

120 AUD is 666 NOK, is that a sign? 

 

I think it's time to bring out the torches and pitchforks and storm the parliament 

[Fallingout]

120 AUD for that connection 

Holy balls! You are being robbed in broad daylight. Your connection is the equivalent of 2 cups and a string. It's unbelievable!

120 AUD is 666 NOK, is that a sign? 

 

I think it's time to bring out the torches and pitchforks and storm the parliament 

Over here infrastructure is ridiculously expensive to build and setup. Unfortunately robbery is a very typical Australian day. For the speed of our connection and data quota, we are doing quite well for $120 AUD especially because we are using 60 year old copper phone line here.

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

Sory for Australian people

 

 

 

From Romania to Australian servers

But the only reason Romania has ultra fast internet is because it is so poor that it didnt have a copper infrustructure, so it made financial sense to  use fibre optic cabling when it finally got round to building telecoms networks.

[BabaBooey]

Over here infrastructure is ridiculously expensive to build and setup. Unfortunately robbery is a very typical Australian day. For the speed of our connection and data quota, we are doing quite well for $120 AUD especially because we are using 60 year old copper phone line here.

We have 60 year cobber here as well. If it weren't for my current HFC connection, and soon to be fibre, I would also have a slow ADSL connection (approx. 6/0.6 - 9/0.8), maybe not compared to yours though 

I'm guessing you must be at least 6 km (3.7 miles) away from the telephone exchange, or you have some really poor copper cables. With ADSL, you can achieve around 20/1, if you are approx. 1 km to 1.2 km (0,6 miles to 0.75 miles) away from the exchange, with 0.6 mm cables.

With VDSL (do your ISP offer that?) you can achieve about 40/20 if you are only 800 m (0.5 miles) away or 25/5 or more if you are a little over 1 km (0.6 miles).

 

I don't doubt that it is quite difficult and expensive to build infrastructure in Australia, considering the sheer size of the country and it's low population density. Not to mention how remote the location of Australia is, no wonder England sent all of it's prisoners there

But if I were the MP of Australia, I would have invested in Australia's Infrastructure. I believe the country will benefit a lot from a fast, reliable, reasonable priced, infrastructure. In the long run.

 

I really hope the necessary changes are made in the near future, to promote competition and to improve the infrastructure

[NInety]

 

I'm in the MIDDLE OF TH UNITED STATES! I SHOULD HAVE FASTER INTERNET

$90 a month BTW

[Cruiseshipfan]

This is sorta connected, I just didn't want to start a new thread and this was the closest related thread I found with i did a quick search. Does anyone know any really up to date sites to find information on the NBN rollout. When labor were in power we were not listed here as being within the 3 year time span for the NBN. But the other week, a house on the corner of my street got a letter that the NBN was being installed within the month (although i don't know full details as it is 3rd hand information). Today crews were starting installation of cables, and it is extremely unlikely to be any other form of cables as they just did upgrades on everything bar the copper phone lines. So its leading me to believe that it is indeed the NBN rollout, but I cannot be sure as I cannot find any up to date information, as since the liberals started destroying everything, NBNco rarely updates anything except for when things are completed.

 

Also can anyone confirm that the liberals nbn plan has not been started yet, as i know last year they were saying that they wont even know what they were doing until at least september, with roll out for it starting in 2015.